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I’m excited for Dragonfly, because on the list of places in the solar system that I desperately want more pictures from, ‘Titan’s surface’ is right up there at the top with ‘Jupiter’s atmosphere.’
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3322/
And I have a hard time believing that there isn’t some solid or liquid (or maybe some other exotic state of matter, due to the heat and pressure) inner core way down in there, even if it’s relatively tiny compared to the size of the planet.
Even if it was entirely made of gas when it formed, surely some materials would have fallen in over the eons that could stay solid/liquid at the pressure/temperature of a gas giant’s core?
Yes, other elements/compounds have fallen into Jupiter over the aeons but even if it was just hydrogen, it is big enough that the pressure alone causes a transition between gas and liquid and farther down solid. There just isn’t a set border where you can say that it is one phase on the one side and a different phase on the other. It does more of a slow transition where the gas gets thicker and thicker until at some point you can say it’s definitely a liquid instead of a gas, which then gets thicker and thicker until it’s not moving anymore.
Similar for Saturn.
There is a core, it’s just comparatively tiny and does not have a clear boundary